At the Hillbilly White House

My 25th Georgetown University class reunion took place in Washington, D.C. June 3-6. It was different from most only in that Bill Clinton hosted it, and that precipitated the highest percentage turnout in Georgetown's history. We also had the largest sitdown dinner in the history of the White House. A couple of events stand out in my mind.

One was a series of four panels (Health Care, the Economy, Social Trends, and Foreign Relations) where 16 of us gave our opinions on how Billary is doing. I sat on the Social Trends panel, and was suitably Outrageous, much to the delight of the audience.

What was really interesting, however, was the Health Care panel, which featured an Administration representative. Reading Dooneshury, I've come to learn that the White House is populated basically by a bunch of kids in their 20s and early 30s, who all want to control the fate of the nation when they grow up. The Billary person on the Health Care panel was a prim, athletic-looking,' short-haired young lady of 27 years, identified as Hillary's chief assistant in this area. She reminded me of nothing so much as a small Velociraptor - alert, eyes darting everywhere. What she said were forgettable party-line generalities.

But it was apparent that, although she made a show of listening, with a cold plastic veneer of a smile covering her face, the young Velociraptor absolutely knew best, and was just being polite for the sake of show. Scary.

That night, at the White House, I had a photo op with Bill. He seemlessly greeted me with a sincere, "Hello, Doug, how are you?" in response to my friendly "Hi Bill, how you doln'." I don't recall ever having met him in school, so lie must have gotten my name by looking at my name tag completely unobtrusively. I was impressed.

The other interesting incident concerned Chuck Berry's keyboard player, who happens to be an old friend of mine, and played at the White House by complete coincidence that evening. Bob (who is a civil rights attorney in real life, but plays With Chuck (whenever he gets the chance) had the time of his life gaining admission to the White House, and only made it in because Chuck threatened non-performance. The reason was a complicated scrape with the FBI,on ridiculous and trumped-up charges, about three years ago. Bob was shadowed by someone the whole evening, at very close range.

Of course, the place was crawling with grim-looking thugs, dressed in cheap suits with bulges under the arms, and little earphones sticking out of their heads as well. I presume they dispensed with the dark glasses only because it was inside, and nighttime. In any event, they didn't stop any classmates from pocketing a bunch of souvenir Presidential silverware; they were just acting like over-aged college kids. A lot of guys wanted it to be the biggest blowout since Andrew Jackson invited the residents of Washington to visit after his inauguration. But everyone lost nerve, despite the quantities of wine that were made available.

Bill gave a short speech, and everyone clapped and cheered uproariously at any opportunity. Except, twice, when Bill made a couple of policy references and the applause was subdued and polite. True story. Everyone who knew Bill liked him well enough, but few support his policies; Georgetown was a politically and socially conservative school in the 60s. It's only natural, however, that everyone felt better about him than before; he makes you feel like a privileged insider, one of his team, in person. And nobody, including myself, likes to speak ill of someone who's hosted you in his house, even though you're the one who bought it for him, and even though he's creating an atmosphere of class warfare in the U. S.

A good time was had by all, perhaps even Hillary, who sat near Bill, but was surrounded by three or four pert female Velociraptors at all times.